The present invention is directed to an adjustable stop employed to locate merchandise longitudinally of an elongate merchandise display hook of the type employed in pegboard merchandise displays. Such hooks are employed to support a plurality of units of merchandise, typically merchandise which is carried on a card having a hole through the top which is employed to suspend the card, with similar cards being carried on the hook one behind the other.
Adjustable stops employed for this purpose are known in the prior art; see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. to Girouard 2,626,061, Brown 4,217,986 and Thalenfeld 4,471,512. The primary problem addressed by these devices involves the fact that in the typical pegboard merchandise display, in order to make maximum usage of the display, many products are displayed in close proximity to each other. As the supply of products on a given hook diminishes, the remaining products on the hook tend to collect near the back of the hook and are then partially concealed from the customer by products on adjacent hooks. The stops, which typically are resiliently clipped to the hook as in the Brown and Thalenfeld patents referred to above, are placed upon the hook behind the rearwardmost product and may be moved forwardly along the hook to be sure that the forwardmost article is maintained in clear view of the customer at the front end portion of the hook.
Merchandise display hooks for pegboard displays are available from many manufacturers in a wide range of styles, lengths and rod diameters. Typically, the hook is formed from rod stock with an elongate, horizontal product supporting portion which may terminate at its forward end with a short, upwardly inclined section or an enlarged, spherical ball to prevent products from sliding off the front of the hook. In order to perform their intended function, the stops or positioning devices must frictionally grip the hook firmly enough to remain stationary under normal circumstances, but not so firmly as to interfere with manual displacement of the stop along the hook when the position of the stop must be readjusted. The rod stock from which the hooks are made is manufactured in numerous standard diameters within the roughly 1/8 to 1/4 inch diameter range. This encompasses the vast majority of hooks employed for merchandise display purposes, and presents six or more available standard diameters or gages.
Most prior art stops fail to take this variation in diameter into account, with the result that there the stop takes the form of a simple hole through a resilient member, as in the Girouard patent referred to above, the stop is ineffective on hooks constructed of rod stock of a diameter which differs by any substantial amount from the diameter for which the stop was designed. Where the stop is slotted to resiliently grip the hook, in clothes pin fashion between opposed legs, a similar result is achieved, combined with the distinct possibility that the stop will simply fall off hooks of minimum diameter. The through hole type stop of the type shown in the Girouard patent further is frequently unusable on those hooks which rely upon an enlarged ball at the free end to retain the product on the hook.
The present invention is directed to a merchandise positioning stock usable upon merchandise display hooks of the type discussed above having a wide range of rod diameters and capable of being used on hooks having enlarged merchandise retaining balls at their distal ends.